Art Petty on Management

Art Petty on Management Has Changed and Moved

I don't like to do things small or simple, so in what I sincerely hope is the absolute last time I put myself and you through this, I have moved and changed the name of my blog. 

You will now find me at www.artpetty.com and the new name of the blog is Management Excellence.

As I'm writing this and realizing that most people that have moved blogs have basically had to start over from zero to build traffic, this seems like taking two steps in the wrong direction.  However, sometimes you have to step back to grow, and I've got some compelling reasons for making the move, including:

• Integrating my former corporate web site and my blog under one content management system.

• Creating a simpler url (artpetty.com...12 characters versus the almost 40 for this site).

• Gaining the tools and the control through a hosted blog so that I can easily add planned podcasts, webcasts, forums and other tools that I will roll out this year.

• Aligning my blog's name: Management Excellence with my personal mission to promote high performance, great leadership and the pursuit of excellence in business.  

All of the posts and hopefully, all of the comments have been moved to the new site, so 14 months,  160 plus essays and a tremendous number of thoughtful comments on best practices in leadership and strategy, project management, product management and marketing and sales, all remain part of the library. 

For those of you that subscribe via your favorite Reader or happen across this post via Search, please take the opportunity to visit the new Management Excellence site and click on the site's feed.  And don't forget to check out some of the new tools, including the live polls, free down-loadable tools and links and references to many other great resources.

Thanks so much for reading and referencing Art Petty on Management, and I hope to earn your confidence many times over in my new home at the Management Excellence blog!

Art Petty on Management is Moving!

Actually, I'm moving and changing.  Effective December 1, 2008, I will be publishing from a new site (a hosted version of Wordpress) at a new address (www.artpetty.com) with a new name: Management Excellence.  (I will send out several follow-on notes in the next few days with my polite encouragement to redirect your links and/or to visit the new site and redo your RSS feed.  Also, please note that the site is not yet live, so I have not added links.)

That's a lot of "new" all at one time, so here are the particulars:

• I am consolidating two disparate sites...my blog and my business website into one site based on the powerful content management capabilities of wordpress.   Maintaining two sites is no longer necessary or even advisable.  I save on costs and most of all, I will save time by focusing on updating and maintaining one location.

• As narcissistic as it seems, it is good to have a simple, readily identifiable url...and www.artpetty.com is much more straightforward than either my business website or my blog's url. I still like the separate blog name and in spite of the guidance of several gurus about different names (url and blog) will proceed with the blog name of Management Excellence at www.artpetty.com.

• In spite of the challenged economy, demand is growing for my portfolio of services and I am planning on rolling out new workshops, my first of several planned e-books and a whole new resource center for use by visitors and subscribers.  It makes sense to do this in one location.

• I have a great team of developers helping me out at Digisage, and we have a series of expansions planned from the basic site that will be launched on 12/1 to a much bigger and more complete portal for management best practices. 

With all of that being said, I've been warned by some wildly successful bloggers who have lived through this experience that I will lose links, subscribers and readership for awhile and feel a bit like the Maytag Repairman while I am rebuilding traffic.  That's fine.  I am carrying over all 160 plus posts from this blog and will continue to do my best to offer practical, useful ideas as well as the occasional controversial viewpoint on what it takes to realize and sustain performance excellence. 

While moving to a different platform, incorporating a new name and a new URL is a lot to do at one time, better now than later.  I'll be back between this writing on 11/24/08 and 12/1/08 to keep you posted on the progress and highlight the new links and feeds.

Thanks so much for your patience during my construction phase.  I'll look forward to sharing lessons-learned and hopefully help a few readers avoid my pitfalls with this process.

-Art

The Carnival of Human Resources-A Great Content Source

The Carnival of Human Resources, Installment #32 is live today at the Maximize Possibility blog.  One click leads you to 27 great blog postings on all things people, leadership and business. Go ahead and check it out.  You will be glad that you did.   Thanks to Jake Flanagin for running my  post on "Strategy Bursts." It's in some great company with the featured bloggers. 

The First Entry of Another Blog and How I Intend to Deliver Value

Welcome to the first entry!

I've waited a few weeks since setting up this blog on TypePad for just the right inspiration to kick things off.  In the meantime, I've been reading as many other blogs as possible, searching for the key to producing something that resonates with readers, provides thought-provoking ideas and pithy commentary on compelling topics in management. 

Although I read some great blogs (and some that perhaps were not so great), inspiration on how to take the world of blogging by storm never struck. It's too bad, because without the magic of a really cool blog name or some cutting edge, biting commentary, it's not clear how I will stand out with my practical, actionable ideas and perspectives on the business of management in the universe of way cooler blogs.   

However, on the off-chance that you and your associates find some value in the discourse and dialog, it is only fair to make some commitments to the audience.  Mine are as follows:

• Every entry will strive to offer something of actionable value to the reader.  This blog is intended to communicate ideas and approaches to solving common and complex problems in leadership, strategy and sales & marketing.  You should expect to walk away with at least one idea to think about for solving a problem in your business setting with every entry.  If you don't, call me on it.   

• There will be no sugarcoating.  The issues and solutions will be clearly communicated, without pulling punches.  Poor executive practices are at the top of my list to stamp out, so those that engage in these poor practices will squirm when I call you out.

• All ideas and approaches put forth in this blog will be ethical and people-focused.  It doesn't matter what the topic is, I never lose track of the people component of running and growing a business.

• I use the word "Management" with a capital M in the blog on purpose.  Without intending to invite debate about the difference between management and leadership (I get it and so should you), I am applying my own liberal definition of the term to take into account those many activities that we engage in to run and grow a business.  For you leadership/management purists, my apology.

• Blogs should be a many-way conversation-most are not.  I'm not sure why most postings go unacknowledged, other than there are too many blogs and too little time or whether people are screen shy.  As Ken Blanchard indicated, "Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions," so I invite you to join me, grab a cup of coffee and tell me what is on your mind.

I hope that you enjoy the journey and that we get a chance to learn from each other.  Let me know what you think.

And in case you think that I forgot, here are two great resources for you to check out.  The team at Pragmatic Marketing  does a great job for all things Product Marketing/Management and broader Marketing topics for the tech space.  They have some wonderful resources, strong blogs and I speak from experience on their outstanding training services.  Another source, this one focusing on leadership is Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership blog.  Wally offers some great content of his own and aggregates other ideas to provide a one-stop shop for all things leadership. Enjoy!